Netflix listens to customers. Qwikster is no more

Nick Mertes 10 Oct, 2011 at 12:18pm ET Article published in Life

Take an awesome service that most folks love and then, without warning, break it into two pieces and give one of them a stupid name. Add in a bit of customer outrage and you have the Netflix/Qwikster debacle. Fortunately, in a rare instance of a company actually listening to customers and realizing its own mistakes, this separation will not take place.

It turns out most people didn’t like the idea of suddenly having to maintain two accounts, preferring the simplicity of a one-stop-shop for both streaming and by-mail movie service. Oh, and they also really hated the name of the new service. Probably more an indication of the former than the latter, the company’s stock took a nosedive following the announcement, losing nearly 50% of its value in the month since the announcement.

So what else isn’t changing? Well, there’s the pricing structure. A lot of people complained (some even left) when Netflix separated their services and charged $8 for each. Even so, it’s still an excellent deal considering you get unlimited streaming and movies. Netflix is always working towards building their library as well. Starting in 2013 the Dreamworks library will become available for streaming subscribers.

One unknown remains: prior to today’s announcement, Qwikster was supposed to add a video game rental service. It is still unknown whether the feature will surface on Netflix, remain under the Qwikster brand, or go away entirely. Personally, I’m hoping for its appearance on Netflix. I’d much rather give them an extra $8 per month than buy a $60 game that could really suck.

Comments

10 Oct 2011 ~ 12:26pm Sledgehammer70 Without users buying games or taking a chance on a $60 game, companies will die. Yes newer games might be better, but we will be stuck with 100 CoD games
10 Oct 2011 ~ 1:18pm djmeph I think I was the only person in the world that understood and supported Netflix's decision, and it's a shame that they took so much guff for it to the point that their stock fell 50%. However, retrospectively it does look like they were trying to phase out physical media too soon. I guess America isn't quite ready to embrace streaming media yet, much like we're not ready to embrace a black president, 1st world education and health care, and science. I do suspect, however, that the physical media business will continue to decline and the price will go up.
10 Oct 2011 ~ 1:24pm CB

djmeph wrote:

I think I was the only person in the world that understood and supported Netflix's decision, and it's a shame that they took so much guff for it to the point that their stock fell 50%. However, retrospectively it does look like they were trying to phase out physical media too soon. I guess America isn't quite ready to embrace streaming media yet, much like we're not ready to embrace a black president, 1st world education and health care, and science. I do suspect, however, that the physical media business will continue to decline and the price will go up.

You forgot the metric system. If there is one symbol for American's reluctance to embrace change for the better, it is the metric system.
10 Oct 2011 ~ 1:45pm djmeph

CB wrote:

You forgot the metric system. If there is one symbol for American's reluctance to embrace change for the better, it is the metric system.

I agree!
10 Oct 2011 ~ 1:59pm Cyclonite

djmeph wrote:

I think I was the only person in the world that understood and supported Netflix's decision, and it's a shame that they took so much guff for it to the point that their stock fell 50%. However, retrospectively it does look like they were trying to phase out physical media too soon. I guess America isn't quite ready to embrace streaming media yet, much like we're not ready to embrace a black president, 1st world education and health care, and science. I do suspect, however, that the physical media business will continue to decline and the price will go up.

In my opinion, it wasn't necessarily that they were trying to phase out physical media too soon. It's that their offering on the streaming side doesn't come anywhere near the offering on the physical media side. I primarily used the streaming service, but I had the one-dvd-at-a-time plan in case there was a movie I wanted to watch that was unavailable through instant view.

I still subscribe to their streaming service, and I really hope it starts to get better. I think the intention was good, but they tried to execute without enough backing from the movie companies.
10 Oct 2011 ~ 2:06pm djmeph Yeah, they were trying to force the change too soon. Give it another year or two.
10 Oct 2011 ~ 11:18pm Bandrik It still comes down to streaming for convenience, and physical for selection and quality (and bonus features) for me. Both services are equally important to my household.

The issue in my opinion is the whole thing was a clusterfuck of a mess. Splitting into two discrete companies, forcing customers to have 2 separate accounts, re-naming one a ridiculously lame name... the list of blunders is long, but I'm glad they came to their senses.
11 Oct 2011 ~ 12:55am =FPS= De Sniper Now that is just silly, force us all to use streaming completely with no physical media, when you have a bandwidth cap that if you stream all your videos over your bound to go over
> points at the probably more then half of the american public that this would be the case for even tho probably 15-20% of those can't watch movies online because their internet is too slow. I know from experience it is freaking expensive to go over the bandwidth limit.
24 Oct 2011 ~ 3:25pm Cory (@corywilliamson) Hi Nick,

I thought Iâ€™d reach out to you since you wrote about the Netflix/Qwikster debacle! Our company shot a spoof video revealing what REALLY happened to Qwikster! Lol, let me know what you think and feel free to share!

<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qqyZOJc_kn0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qqyZOJc_kn0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

-Cory